Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education All rights reserved No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education 12-1 Chapter 12 The Situation “When you’ve exhausted all possibilities, remember this: You haven’t!” ~Robert H Schuller 12-2 Introduction • Situational engineering occurs when leaders use their knowledge of how the situation affects leadership to proactively change the situation to improve the chances of success • Leaders in dangerous situations may adopt different strategies to be successful than they would in more normal situations • The situation often explains more about what is going on and what kinds of leadership behaviors will be best than any other single variable 12-3 Introduction (continued) • The appropriateness of a leader’s behavior in a group often makes sense only in the situational context in which the behavior occurs • The situation, not someone’s traits or abilities, plays the most important role in determining who emerges as a leader • Historically, great leaders emerge during social upheavals or economic crises • Early situational theories asserted that leaders were made, not born, and that prior leadership experience helped forge effective leaders 12-4 Introduction (continued) • Role theory: A leader’s behavior depends on the leader’s perceptions of critical aspects of the situation Rules and regulations governing the job Role expectations of subordinates, peers, and superiors Nature of the task Feedback about subordinates’ performance • Multiple-influence model identifies factors: Microvariables (e.g., task characteristics) Macrovariables (e.g., the external environment) • The three main situational levels of abstraction are task, organizational, and environmental 12-5 An Expanded Leader-FollowerSituation Model Figure 12.1: An Expanded Leader–Follower– Situation Model 12-6 How Tasks Vary, and What That Means for Leadership • Task Autonomy: Degree to which a job provides an individual with some control over what is done and how it is done • Task Feedback: Degree to which a person accomplishing a task receives information about performance from performing the task itself • Task Structure: Degree to which there are known procedures for accomplishing the task and rules governing how one goes about it • Task Interdependence: Degree to which tasks require coordination and synchronization for work groups or teams to accomplish a desired goals 12-7 Problems and Challenges • Technical problems are challenges for which the problem-solving resources already exist – Resources have two aspects: specialized methods and specialized expertise – Technical problems can be solved without changing the nature of the social system in which they occur • Adaptive problems cannot be solved using currently existing resources or ways of thinking – It can be difficult reaching a common definition of what the problem really is – Adaptive problems can only be solved by changing the system itself – Adaptive problems, which involve people’s values, require adaptive leadership for solutions 12-8 Adaptive and Technical Challenges Table 12.1: Adaptive and Technical Challenges 12-9 From the Industrial Age to the Information Age • In the information age, many fundamental assumptions of the industrial age are becoming obsolete • Kaplan and Norton identified six changes in the ways companies operate to address the changes in the environment Cross functions Links to customers and suppliers Customer segmentation Global scale Innovation Knowledge workers 12-10 The Informal Organization: Organizational Culture (continued) • Leaders can change culture by attending to or ignoring particular issues, problems, or projects • Leaders can modify culture: Through their reactions to crises By rewarding new or different kinds of behavior By eliminating previous punishments or negative consequences for certain behaviors 12-17 A Theory of Organizational Culture • The values depicted on opposite ends of each axis in the Competing Values Framework are inherently in tension with each other • An organization’s culture represents a balance between these competing values • People tend not to be consciously aware of their own organization’s culture • The framework helps organizations be more deliberate in identifying a culture more likely to be successful given their respective situations, and in transitioning to it 12-18 The Competing Values Framework Figure 12.2: The Competing Values Framework 12-19 A Theory of Organizational Culture (continued) • The distinctive sets of values in the four quadrants of the Competing Values Framework define four unique organizational cultures Hierarchy cultures tend to have formalized rules and procedures Market cultures emphasize stability and control but focus their attention on the external environment Clan cultures emphasize flexibility and discretion, focus primarily inward, and have a strong sense of cohesiveness Adhocracy cultures emphasize a high degree of flexibility and discretion and focus primarily on the environment outside the organization 12-20 The Environment • Ronald Heifetz argues that leaders not only are facing more crises than ever before but that a new mode of leadership is needed because we’re in a permanent state of crisis • Change has become so fast and so pervasive that it impacts virtually every organization everywhere, and everyone in them • VUCA describes this new state of affairs: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous • Leadership has never been easy and appears to be growing more difficult 12-21 Contrasting Different Environments in the Situational Level Figure 12.4: Contrasting Different Environments in the Situational Level 12-22 The Environment (continued) • It is critical for leaders to have an understanding of societal culture and the associated beliefs, characteristics, and customs Failure to so can result in conflicts and misunderstandings • Societal culture refers to those learned behaviors characterizing the total way of life of members within any given society • Business leaders in the global context need to become aware and respectful of cultural differences and cultural perspectives 12-23 The GLOBE Study • GLOBE, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Program, is based on implicit leadership theory – Individuals have implicit beliefs/assumptions about attributes/behaviors that distinguish leaders from followers, effective leaders from ineffective leaders, and moral from immoral leaders – Relatively distinctive implicit theories of leadership characterize different societal cultures from each other as well as organizational cultures within those societal cultures, i.e., culturally endorsed implicit theories of leadership (CLT) 12-24 The GLOBE Study (continued) • GLOBE identified dimensions for assessing CLT across all global cultures Charismatic/value-based leadership inspires, motivates, and expects high performance from others on the basis of firmly held core values Team-oriented leadership emphasizes effective team building and implementation of a common goal Participative leadership is the degree that managers involve others in making/implementing decisions Humane-oriented leadership is supportive Autonomous leadership is independent leadership Self-protective leadership focuses on ensuring the security of the individual or group member 12-25 CLT Leadership Dimensions Table12.4: Relative Rankings of Selected Societal Clusters on CLT Leadership Dimensions 12-26 Universally Positive Leadership Attributes Table12.5: Leader Attributes and Behaviors Universally Viewed as Positive 12-27 Universally Negative Leadership Attributes TABLE 12.6 Leader Attributes and Behaviors Universally Viewed as Negative 12-28 Culturally Contingent Leadership Attributes TABLE 12.7 Examples of Leader Behaviors and Attributes That Are Culturally Contingent 12-29 Implications for Leadership Practitioners • Leadership practitioners should expect to face a variety of challenges to their own systems of ethics, values, or attitudes during their careers • People holding seemingly antithetical values may need to work together, and dealing with diverse values will be an increasingly common challenge for leaders • Leaders in particular have a responsibility not to let their own personal values interfere with professional leader–subordinate relationships unless the conflicts pertain to issues clearly relevant to the work and the organization 12-30 Summary • The situation may be the most complex factor in the leader–follower–situation framework • Situations vary in complexity and strength • The organizational level includes both the formal organization and informal organization • An increasingly important variable at the environmental level is societal culture, which involves learned behaviors that guide the distinctive mannerisms, ways of thinking, and values within particular societies 12-31 ... must contribute value by what they know and by the information they can provide 12- 12 The Formal Organization • Studying the formal organization involves the disciplines of management, organizational... that prior leadership experience helped forge effective leaders 12- 4 Introduction (continued) • Role theory: A leader’s behavior depends on the leader’s perceptions of critical aspects of the situation... be successful given their respective situations, and in transitioning to it 12- 18 The Competing Values Framework Figure 12. 2: The Competing Values Framework 12- 19 A Theory of Organizational Culture